


Cat Trouble

by Taelle



Category: Takarazuka Revue RPF
Genre: Angst, Animal Transformation, Cats, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:07:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1292518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taelle/pseuds/Taelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, one day during a rehearsal the new nibante of Hanagumi suddenly turns into a cat...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cat Trouble

According to the schedule, the second rehearsal room right now should have had Hanagumi – or, to be precise, certain people from Hanagumi – rehearsing song numbers. And there were actually hanagumisei in the second rehearsal room; only the rehearsal process had temporarily frozen. Hanagumi top star Ranju Tomu was staring at her nibante, who had just a moment ago turned into a cat right before Tomu’s eyes.  
  
Tomu was used to believing her own eyes and never before had an occasion to doubt her own sanity, but at this particular moment she really wanted to ask someone – perhaps the accompanist – whether she had gone crazy without noticing it (though judging by the accompanist’s face, the woman was fighting with a similar problem herself). Or it could have been that she fell asleep for a couple of seconds – that happens if you haven’t slept properly the night before – and managed to have a short dream. Right?  
  
Tomu pinched her own arm and looked at the cat. The cat – a small white and ginger cat with a neat fluffy tail – had not disappeared. She was sitting not far from Tomu – at a distance suitable for a duet, and looking at the top star. And she looked a bit guilty. Probably. Tomu never claimed to be good at assessing the facial expressions of cats, even if those cats had been otokoyaku until two minutes ago.  
  
The door to the second rehearsal room opened and someone entered. Tomu, the cat and the accompanist started almost at once and looked towards the door.  
  
Hanagumi top musumeyaku Ranno Hana managed to cross almost half the room before she noticed the cat. Then she stopped.  
  
“Oh, Asumi-san,” she said, “I somehow thought you stopped doing that…”  
  
The cat made a sound that Tomu was almost ready to interpret as a strangled moan and jumped up the piano in a single smooth movement. Having watched out of the corner of her eyes that she did manage to land (“like a real cat!”) Tomu turned towards her musumeyaku partner.  
  
“You mean she often did… does that?”  
  
Ran-chan blushed.  
  
“Well, not often… sometimes. I’ve only seen it twice, and the first time was entirely by chance. Actually very few people know that, usually the upperclassmen take care of everything… I was told that it’s not much of a problem; it usually goes away in a couple of days. Erm, Asumi-san, can I pet you?”  
  
Tomu sighed. Apparently that was all the useful information that she was going to get from Ran-chan. And kami-sama, the things that keep happening in Takarazuka …  
  
Perhaps they’d better buy some cat food, she thought and looked back at the piano. The accompanist and Ran-chan were petting the cat _a quatre mains_.

* * *

Next day saw the arrival of a very peculiar delegation at Tsukigumi. The top combi of Hanagumi solemnly moved through the corridor leading to the rehearsal room currently assigned to Tsukigumi; Ran-chan marched a step behind her otokoyaku partner, and a tense Tomu was carrying a small white and ginger cat. It wasn’t that the cat was trying to get away: she just expressed with her whole body that these weren’t her people and she had nothing to do with that. And it wasn’t that Tomu was carrying the cat by the scruff of her neck: she just was very evidently afraid of holding her the wrong way, of claiming something she shouldn’t – basically Tomu just was clearly very uncomfortable. If there were an observer able to appreciate this scene with an unbiased eye, such an observer would probably notice how the behavior of Ranju Tomu and of the cat actually had a lot in common. But the only available observer was Ran-chan – who right at this moment noticed a classmate of hers in the doorway of the common dressing room.  
  
Then the door of the nearby smaller dressing room opened, the one inhabited by the most senior troupe members. And at the same moment the cat slipped out of Tomu’s hands and ran through that door.  
  
Tomu entered after her – right in time to see the cat jump into the arms of Ryuu Masaki, who reflexively switched the cat closer towards her shoulder, not paying attention to cat hair on her dark T-shirt.  
  
“… I think this is yours,” Tomu said because she did not know what else to say.  
  
“No, actually, yours now,” top star of Tsukigumi said with her face devoid of any expression, and scratched the cat under the chin.  
  
Ranju Tomu sighed, and then shook her head a little, because right then, she felt, Ryuu Masaki herself was looking rather like a cat. A very independent cat absolutely and totally not interested in what was happening around her, because it had absolutely and totally nothing to do with her.  
  
Good thing this one wasn’t turning into a cat too, Tomu thought, and decided that she needed to borrow someone’s dog to walk today, to counteract the current overabundance of cat trouble in her life.  
  
“Ryuu-san,” she said, sighing once more, “I suspect cats aren’t much interested in administrative decisions of the theatre board of directors. Of course you can try and explain to…” she nodded at the cat, whom she couldn’t manage to call by her human name for all of the last 24 hours, “about troupe transfers, but…”  
  
“Stupid cat,” Ryuu Masaki breathed out so quietly that Tomu held back and did not attempt to answer. “Stupid, stupid cat…”  
  
Then she lifted her head and smiled at Tomu with a bright and happy smile of someone who spent almost half of her life on stage.  
  
“Please forgive us for this trouble, Ranju-san. I assure you it won’t be for long and your rehearsals won’t suffer much. I can bring you everything necessary for…”  
  
“Please don’t,” Tomu said firmly. “I already spent half a day trying to watch a cat that had her own opinion about what she’s rehearsing, where she’s rehearsing and with whom she’s rehearsing it. I’ll inform the directors that Asumi-san is ill and I’ll be expecting her at the rehearsals in a couple of days.”  
  
The cat purred so clearly in answer that Tomu almost decided she was fit to go onstage in any shape.  
  
They needed to have a picnic or something together with Tsukigumi next week, she decided, going towards the common dressing room to pick up Ran-chan. As long as the two troupes had rehearsals at the same time… Otherwise this cat trouble could drive them all crazy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to new-vogue-ravyn for betaing this.


End file.
